To reduce calf cramps and avoid straining your calf muscles, choose fins that strap on your legs, not on your feet. These comfortable fins give you extra power whilst helping you to avoid calf muscle strain and prevent calf cramps.
Foot fins often cause terrible cramps in your calf muscles. Then it becomes too painful to kick, so you have to stop swimming. This can be very dangerous if you are stranded out in the water, unable to swim. These calf cramps happen because foot fins force you to point your feet and toes unnaturally, to hold the foot fins in position. This works your calf muscles far too much. So your calf muscle strain builds up and you get calf cramps.
You can test this for yourself by swimming without fins. You will probably find that you don’t get calf cramps or pain when you kick without any fins. Most likely, this is because you are kicking with less strain in your calf muscles, as you no longer need to hold the foot fins pointed. So, as your calves don’t hurt when swimming without fins, that tells you that your calves won’t hurt when swimming with fins on your legs either.
Fins on your legs promote a similar kick to swimming without fins. So they don’t hurt your calf muscles. Plus they overcome many other foot fin faults, including Achilles tendon pain, knee pain and back pain.
Here are three key reasons why choosing fins that fit on your legs prevents calf cramps, and avoids calf muscle strain and pain.
Firstly, fins on your legs strap just above your ankles. This direct connection to your legs gives you extra fin power from your hips, using your larger muscles in your thighs, buttocks and torso. So you don’t use your calf muscles as much as you do with foot fins. Instead, you use your calf muscles much less, similar to kicking without fins.
Secondly, these fins don’t force your calf muscles to contract to point your feet unnaturally like foot fins do. So you don’t have the extra calf muscle strain needed to hold cumbersome foot fins in position. Instead, your calf muscles only move your feet in a similar way to swimming without fins. This means your calves are more relaxed, like for a good swimming kick without fins.
Thirdly, fins on your legs encourage a streamlined kick from your hips, keeping your knees fairly straight, with only a little knee-bend. This further reduces your calf muscle strain because your calf muscles do not need to bend your knee joints as much as with foot fins.
Your calf muscles will feel much more comfortable with fins on your legs.
Fins that care for your calf muscles
Your calf muscles point your feet and bend your knees. You can take care of them, in particular, by reducing strain and cramps in your Gastrocnemius calf muscles. Instead of using foot fins, you can now more carefully exercise your calf muscles by swimming with fins on your legs.
Fins that do much more than reduce calf cramps
Related FAQ explain why fins on your legs avoid Achilles tendinitis and why they avoid hurting your knees. Please also see the overall fin comfort FAQ, the main article for fin comfort and the fin comfort reviews.
These groups of reviews demonstrate less calf cramp, less Achilles and heel pain and less knee pain. These specific reviews illustrate less calf cramps for cardio exercise and fin training.